Question

Sharon and Amy are roommates. They spend most of their time studying (of course), but they leave some time for their favorite activities: making pizza and brewing root beer. Sharon takes 4 hours to brew a gallon of root beer and 2 hours to make a pizza. Amy takes 6 hours to brew a gallon of root beer and 4 hours to make a pizza.
a. What is each roommate’s opportunity cost of making a pizza? Who has the absolute advantage in making pizza? Who has the comparative advantage in making pizza?
b. If Sharon and Amy trade foods with each other, who will trade away pizza in exchange for root beer?
c. The price of pizza can be expressed in terms of gallons of root beer. What is the highest price at which pizza can be traded that would make both roommates better off? What is the lowest price? Explain.

Answer 1

Answer:

Explanation:

:

Sharon and Amy are roommates. They spend most of their time studying (of course), but they leave some time for their favorite activities: making pizza and brewing root beer. Sharon takes 4 hours to brew a gallon of root beer and 2 hours to make a pizza. Amy takes 6 hours to brew a gallon of root beer and 4 hours to make a pizza.  

a. What is each roommate’s opportunity cost of making a pizza?

Each room mates opportunity cost of making pizza is the beer they would have made with the time spent on making pizza which is

Sharon = 2/4 gallon of beer or 0.5 gallon of beer

Amy = 4/6 gallon of beer or 0.67 gallon of beer

Who has the absolute advantage in making pizza?  

Sharon arguably has absolute advantage because she has comparative advantage in producing both items because she spends less time producing both however she spends half the time of Amy in producing Pizza in particular

Who has the comparative advantage in making pizza?  

Sharon because she spends half the time of Amy in producing Pizza  

b. If Sharon and Amy trade foods with each other, who will trade away pizza in exchange for root beer? Amy will trade pizza for root beer because she has a greater disadvantage in Pizza production in relation to root beer when compared to Sharon. She spends double the time of Sharon in making Pizza but less than double the time of Sharon in making root beer

c. The price of pizza can be expressed in terms of gallons of root beer.  

Sharon = 2 hours/4 hours gallon of beer or 0.5 gallon of beer per pizza

Amy = 4 hours/6 hours gallon of beer or 0.67 gallon of beer per pizza

What is the highest price at which pizza can be traded that would make both roommates better off?  

That price should be lower than Amy's cost but higher than Sharon's cost, so they can both make profits. = (0.5+0.67)/2 = 0.585 gallon of root beer

What is the lowest price? Explain.

The lowest price will be the opportunity cost of Sharon which is 0.5 gallon of root beer because if the price is lower it becomes a loss to Sharon